Eyes I Dare Not Meet In Dreams
by Nokomiss
Summary: Between the idea and the reality, between the motion and the act, falls the Shadow. T.S. Eliot


Eyes I Dare Not Meet In Dreams

Summary: Between the idea / And the reality / Between the motion / And the act / Falls the Shadow. - T.S. Eliot

Pairing: Draco/Ginny

Rating: Hard R

Warnings: No promises, enter at your own risk.

AN: Title taken from T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men," which was very much an inspiration for this. a href"http/ can read it here. /a Thanks to the ever-lovely Rainpuddle13 for the (quick!) beta.

* * *

The first thing Ginny noticed was that the sky was grey.

This in and of itself wasn't an extraordinary event, as the sky was ofttimes grey. But this shade seemed different, somehow- darker, dull and utterly lacking in vibrancy or any sublimity that she had always looked upon the heavens with before.

The sky she was staring up at, lying flat on her back and easily ignoring the rocks digging into her flesh, was a dull matte, unfinished and with no greater meaning than simply the atmosphere separating the land from space.

There was no movement, no birds or leaves or even visible movement of clouds.

The world was still; and she with it.

* * *

Draco nodded numbly as the Dark Lord grinned fiendishly, teeth dull and yellow in the candle light. He stood perfectly still, unable to move a muscle without explicit direction.

All his life, the idea of the Dark Lord, of having a crusader hellbent on making sure the Pureblood's right claim on the fabric of society was held, had given Draco something to look up to. His father had known the greatness of fighting to preserve their heritage, and Draco had understood it too.

Draco had thought that every time he stood in this position, in supplication to his childhood hero, he would feel pride. He had the first time, after all. For those first few, exhilarating seconds standing before the terrifying visage that had brought the wizarding world to its knees, he had felt pride and joy and an intense longing to prove himself.

Now, he felt nothing. He was hollow.

Now that he had taken the final step, the one he couldn't look back away from, all he could see in the eyes of the Dark Lord was his own death, replaying over and over until all the details blurred together.

There was no release.

* * *

The world fades more every day, as colors and memories and feelings leek out of her traitorous body.

She cannot remember how long she has been held by the Death Eaters, but she thinks it must be forever. Day and night and love and hate and right and wrong have all become meaningless, vague notions that another girl, one who was alive and vibrant and beautiful held close to her heart.

Ginny holds nothing close to her heart. Ginny fears she doesn't have a heart anymore, that the emptiness she feels inside of her means that she is no longer a person. That she is no longer Ginevra Molly Weasley, who liked flying and kissing Harry Potter and eating too many sweets. She doesn't know who she is anymore, if she ever was or if she ever will be again.

When the Death Eaters call her from her tomb of sorrow and emptiness, she doesn't realize their eyes are as hollow as her own.

She bows before the Dark Lord, whose serpentine body is wreathed in black robes laced with spider webs and gravedust, and sees only eyes that once belonged to someone she loved.

Will she ever love again? Will she ever see love in another's eyes?

The Dark Lord's commands send her stumbling out of the room, knowing that the answer is no.

* * *

This punishment has lasted forever, Draco sometimes thinks when he can no longer remember what his mother looked like or why the pansies in the garden outside the Dark Lord's home send him itching, uncomfortable memories of something that might be happiness. And the worst part is he knows there is no final reprieve that will save him from his fate.

He's trapped, trapped in this shell with as little hope for escape as an_ i Imperious_ /I victim.

He is wandering the long, filthy hall of the cellar, the one with ratty curtained doorways to all the tiny cells they call home, when he sees someone who he thinks is familiar.

It's too hard to think, too hard to remember, but he thinks that the notion of a feeling he gets when he spies brittle red hair and vacant brown eyes might be love, or it might be hate, or disdain or disgust, but either way it's something other than emptiness.

He isn't sure that it's okay for him to make contact with her. Its been so long since he attempted communication with anything that his voice comes out a harsh rasp that whistles through his throat. He can't quite seem to make a true noise, but she lays a finger across his lips and forces her lips into the facsimile of a smile.

It's grotesque, but it's beautiful because it's meant for him.

* * *

Ginny arches her body against his, feeling all the hard angles and protruding bones straining against wasted flesh.

No matter how hard she bites, no blood oozes from the indents her teeth create on this broken shell.

His breath, useless and desperate, makes faint music as it escapes his throat. She can almost remember a song, can almost remember the pearly laughter of youth in the rhythmic sound, but loses touch of the memory almost as soon as it is uncovered.

For a time, her world consists of cold hands, dry flesh and the whisper of ragged nails on torn skin.

She thinks remotely that she should feel something. That the bony fingers reaching into her, sliding through her barriers, should somehow reach past her womb into her very being, should connect her to the world somehow.

That the being sliding in and out of her pliant flesh should raise some of the feelings she's lost.

Instead, she thinks maybe this desperate coupling is only reminding her of what she's lost. Is only reminding her of her own stagnation and barren existence. This isn't creating life, it isn't affirming vitality.

In the end it's just dead flesh greeting dead flesh in a gruesome parody of life.

It's a macabre verisimilitude, this, a celebration of life between things that are so clearly dead.

* * *

Eventually they give up, realizing that there is no release to be found.

They've abandoned trying to connect, trying to find the things they've lost in each other.

They sit on either side of the tomb, on the plain grey slab that she has been allotted as a bed. Or perhaps this is the tomb he was sent to. It makes no difference.

He cannot recall her name, or if he ever knew it to begin with. He tries to ask, but air simply whistles out of his throat fruitlessly, and he is unable to make a sound.

Their time is ending. His time ended long ago, only now he realizes it.

He is decaying.

* * *

His eyes are grey, as grey as her universe.

* * *

She reaches out to him, grasps his hand.

He pulls away, but in her hand his flesh remains, sloughing off the bone into a putrid puddle of who he was and who he has ceased to be.

It takes her a moment to realize the black, decayed thing grasped around the grey meat and green pus is her hand.

It's been so long since she could feel.

I am a dead thing, she thinks wildly. I am a dead thing.

* * *

His eyes are grey like her universe, only now that is fading too.

* * *

He remembers the monstrousness of the Dark Lord's face, then realizes that he is not merely remembering but standing before the Dark Lord. Present and past and future have little meaning when in the tomb with her, but here where the living walk purposefully and war is being fought, time means everything.

The command he is given does not make sense for the longest time, because he does not know who "Draco" and "Ginny" and "Harry" are. He stands, feeling something seeping from his right eye. He can no longer see anything other than the play of light and darkness and that horrible, horrible greyness that the world seems steeped in.

The Dark Lord assaults the remains of his mind with images until what he is to do is clear.

Draco (that was him, that was what they had called him _before_) was to take Ginny (the redheaded girl whose nails had wracked his skin and whose mouth tasted of ash) to Harry (whose image came with the impression of discontent).

He nodded stiffly.

* * *

His eyes were white now, irises clouded over and making her long for the comfort of the grey.

* * *

When the familiar black haired boy, healthy and pink and horror-stricken, sobbed out the spell that made her world erupt in fire, she could only remember two things.

The green flash(_a pitiful sound and a silver hand clutching a black wand and her own desperate death cry_), and haunting grey eyes.

* * *

He watched her burn, red hair blending into flames that licked and devoured her rotting flesh more fervently than he ever had.

_Fenrir's rasping laugh as he dragged inhuman claws across Draco's exposed throat._

The boy (Harry Potter, a name accompanied with a taste of the Dark Lord's fear slithering slowly through Draco's disintegrating mind) turning slowly, tears trickling down his face as he said, "Incendio" with a shaky voice.

_His life's blood soaking his Death Eater robes._

Disappointment.

Death.


End file.
